Escape

Ebuka walked down the stairs thinking of his dead twin brother. He had killed his twin, he was told. But he knew he couldn’t have done such a thing except in a situation as volatile as the one he had heard over and over again that led up to his twin’s death. Chidera, his twin, was a cultist, a point 3 in the Baga’s chain of command. He and his men had gone after an opposing cult in a fight which went bad.

Somehow, he had been caught. There began his torturous experience which knew no bounds.

Every effort, every plea to use his father’s political connection to free himself had proved futile. His father renounced him and left him to die.

He escaped and ran home, a ghost of himself, to teach his family a lesson. Somehow, his family got to him badly, his pains and fears were subjected to how he was treated. Ebuka remembered the fight; he was fighting to defend his parents while Chidera fought like a maniac to get them.

He was told that he and his twin were found in a pool of blood. At first people thought he was Chidera, but he started asking for Chidera, his twin.

He tried to smile as he got to the sitting room. His parents were there before their anniversary cake surrounded by his younger siblings, Ezinne and Iheanacho. It was exactly a year ago since Chidera’s death, he remembered as music began to play.

The music did something to him, it triggered something. He flinched, shivered, and struggled not to collapse.

“Ebuka!” his mother shouted.

“What is wrong with him?”

He heard his father’s voice through a haze as Ebuka’s always smiling features was gradually replaced by Chidera’s hardened lines with eyes full of hate. Somewhere in all that, the hateful guilt lunged at him for killing his twin.

He walked calmly towards his father, the cake and the knife. He freed the knife from the cake and buried it deep in his father’s chest.

“Ebuka!”

He turned, the same hatred in his eyes for his mother. He blamed her as well for the death of his twin.

“How can you not know your son?” he asked huskily before he drove the bloody knife into her neck.

His bloodshot eyes caught his siblings scrambling away, but he didn’t go after them. He wasn’t here for them.

The music played on, bringing him more memories of that night he had escaped and run home to kill his parents but mistakenly killed his twin. The idiot kept defending them. With the memories came the guilt, loads upon loads till it was too much for him and he escaped into being Ebuka again.

Ogechukwu Emmanuel Samuel.

A poet, writer, and songwriter who loves travelling in books and stories.

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10 thoughts on “Escape”

Troysays:

That bobo is too angry. Na who send am to join cult? Kids like to blame their folks for their misfortune like the parents are also given praise for their success. A man cannot be lazy and expect to be praised for his laziness. But not recognizing one’s child is quite a lazy thing to do too. Those parents didn’t deserve to die anyway, life doesn’t have an equal. It’s not like he was killed while in jail. He should have found a less violent approach to the issue. In the end, peace always does more good than war. He fled again, with no family, no real friends and a dead man’s identity.

Nawa o! Were they that identical? How couldn’t their parents tell them apart? Tell who died and who lived? That alone is the crime that warranted their death, not being able to tell their own sons apart.